Day Eight: The Beale Street Blues

Memphis is AWESOME.  If you take anything away from this entry, know that.

We're out of Mississippi, and into Tennessee, staying in Memphis before we turn East to Shiloh tomorrow.  And in contrast to Charleston, Memphis is a proper city, with buildings taller than 10 floors, a major league professional sports franchise, and one hell of a nightlife.

Anyway, we left Vicksburg this morning and headed North, queuing up the O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack as we headed past Yazoo City and Indianola, as most of the movie takes place in Northwest Mississippi.  Honestly from the road most of the state still looks like it did in 1937, and I was glad that we had a full tank of gas.  I also remarked that unlike the other states we've been in, it was a struggle to see non-Mississippi plates while in Mississippi.  It's not that we didn't see any; there were some Alabama and Louisiana plates in Vicksburg, and some Tennessee and Missouri plates up North, but the vast majority of plates were just from Mississippi.  Not to be snide, but I think it's just that not a lot of people visit Mississippi.  It's still the poorest state in the Union, and the number of trailers we saw on the road was equaled only by the number of abandoned or foreclosed houses.  Sorry to say again that Mississippi didn't dispel any ideas I had about it before I arrived.  Every other state we've visited has shattered my pre-conceived notions otherwise.

Though it's not quite fair to say I only had pre-conceived notions about Tennessee.  My mom was born and raised outside of Knoxville in east Tennessee, and while East and West Tennessee are VERY different, it was odd how much more at home and at ease I felt immediately after we crossed into the Volunteer State.  And that was before we'd even reached Memphis.

Coming from someone that doesn't know much about the Blues, or BBQ, Memphis makes me wish I did.  The whole city smells delicious, as scents from all the restaurants waft everywhere.  Even the hot and stagnant parking garage where we put the Prius smelled like pork.  We visited the home of WC Handy, who apparently invented the Blues, as well as the Cotton Museum, housed in the Memphis Cotton Exchange, which is a gorgeous turn-of-the-century building demonstrating the place of cotton in Southern life past and present.

Unfortunately we missed a Memphis tradition by a matter of minutes, when we went into the Peabody Hotel to watch the Duck Parade.  The hotel has a fountain in its lobby where they've had ducks for like 100 years, and every morning and evening an impressively-dressed doorman (think Sid Caesar) escorts them too and from the fountain.  We had multiple recommendations to see the parade from my brother Scott, my uncle Joe, and our friend Liz, but alas, we arrived right as they were rolling the red carpet back up.  Next time, I guess.  We also went to Beale Street for dinner, where I had the most delicious pulled pork sandwich I've had in my entire life.  Oh, also, there's no open container law on Beale Street, so I was able to get my beer to go, and later order both a local brew made with pecans from a walkthrough bar window, as well as a Dr Pepper in a glass bottle, made with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.  Both were unfairly tasty.

There was also live music in every restaurant and bar up and down the street, which ran the gamut from traditional BBQ to Cajun to Creole.  Seriously, I want to come back, preferably in the winter so I can enjoy 65 degree heat instead of 100 degree heat, and so I can go to a Memphis Grizzlies NBA game, since their arena is right on Beale Street too.  I can only imagine the pre and post-game scene.

But really, other than our jaunt downtown during the evening, I don't have much to report.  We're both looking forward to Shiloh tomorrow since it's the biggest battle we both don't know much about, and I'm excited for Amanda to see more of Tennessee, since part of my family's history is here and I'm hoping she likes it.  But once again it's getting late, and if I'm to be chipper for the drive tomorrow, I should probably pack it in.  G'night!

-M

Day Seven: The Vicksburg Siege and the Unreconstructed South

Well, we made it.  Today was a day I had been thinking about for quite some time, since it was one of the BIG days of driving we had planned, getting us from Georgia to the Mississippi River in one day, with enough time left over once we got to Vicksburg to see the battlefield and get settled in.  We actually opted out of camping once we got here to discover 97 degree heat and 100% humidity, and I'm nestled on our bed with the AC going full blast.  I'm not going to apologize for our decision.

But anyway, today was a day of stray observations and conversations as we winded our way West across Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.  I figured I'd list a few briefly, since we've come across a lot in the hours we've spent in the car (apart from games like High School or Megachurch) and I didn't know how else to get them down:

-Using the outline of your state to mark your state routes works if you have a nice big distinctive state like Georgia or Texas, but when you're Alabama, it just makes your state look fat.  Especially when it's a three-digit route number.  It looks like the state of Alabama is on the toilet.

-I have seen a grand total of three Catholic Churches, one Synagogue, no Orthodox Churches, no mosques, no Mormon Temples, and approximately infinity billion Baptist Churches.

-One even wanted to make sure they knew where they stood on recent national fast food discrimination debates with a sign that said "Eat Mor Chikin"

-You might be familiar with the sings that you see up North right before you go over a bridge on the highway.  In New England, the signs say "Warning: Bridge Ices Before Road".  As we moved South, the signs changed to "Warning: Bridge May Ice In Winter", and then once we moved to the Deep South, it became "Warning: Bridge May Ice in Cold Weather".  Differences in expectations in winter.

-The cashier at the casino we went to checked our IDs, and remarked at our Massachusetts licenses, "Is it cold up there?"  To which we had to say no; it's August everywhere, dude.

-We have passed a Marine Base, an Army Base, a Naval Base, and an Air Force Base.  If we pass a Coastie Installation we get to call out Bingo.

-Just so you know, there's still a ton of cotton down here.

-Tobacco too.

-"Stonewall Jackson Bivouacked Here" is the Southern Equivalent of "George Washington Slept Here"

-Selma, Alabama reminded me very much of North Conway, New Hampshire, and I'm not sure who comes out worse in that comparison.

-Amanda remarked that she and Mississippians are mutually unintelligible, and I'm inclined to agree.

-Just so you know, South, Up North we consider it a courtesy to post the new speed limit each time it changes, especially when you leave a town.  If the speed limit is 35 and the road becomes a divided highway out of town, I'm assuming the limit goes up to 55 or whatever, but it'd be nice to know.  Tailgating the Damn Yankee who doesn't know how to drive is one way to let me know how fast I should be going, but I'm still terrified of being pulled over by a state trooper with reflective aviator sunglasses who will call me "Boy", or "Son".

But anyway, Vicksburg.  Vicksburg, much like Andersonville yesterday, represents a very different side of the Civil War.  Unlike Antietam and its bloody slaughter in a matter of minutes, or Gettysburg and its valiant, romanticized charges, Vicksburg was a whole lot of planning, counterplanning, and waiting.  That doesn't mean there wasn't action, or that it wasn't massively important to the Union's strategy of seizing the Mississippi and cutting the South in two.  It just wasn't glamorous in the same way.

On a bluff 300 feet over the river, Vicksburg was transformed into a nigh-impregnable fortress by the Confederates, and try as he might Ulysses S. Grant (I knew we'd run into him sooner or later!) couldn't breach the city's defenses.  He tried attacking directly.  He tried flanking it.  He tried building canals in the swamps upstream to go around the damn place.  Nothing worked.  Eventually he dug n and had his army start building trenches, and occasionally they'd tunnel up to, and even sometimes underneath, the Rebel lines.  Every now and then they'd blow up the tunnels and try and assault the newly formed craters, but even that didn't work.  The Confederates were too well defended, and they had a series of forts ringing the city that they could defend with a minimal number of men.  So Grant waited.

See what I mean about it not being so glamorous? I'd love to tell you eventually he captured the city with a sweeping attack of tactical genius, but the fact of the matter is he surrounded them with twice the number of cannons, and shelled the city just to be a jerk while they ran out of food.  There were even apparently reports by civilians of their horses, and later even their dogs and cats going missing as the Confederate soldiers got more desperate.  Eventually dysentery showed up and they had to surrender, on July 4, 1863, just as Grant was digging a new massive tunnel for one final assault.  So the day after Gettysburg ended, the Union captured Vicksburg and the Confederates' backs were essentially broken.

Side note:  Can you imagine being at the White House for that Fourth of July Celebration?  Seriously, Lincoln gets news of Gettysburg, THEN Vicksburg.  Dude must have had a cookout for the AGES that day.

Vicksburg is also surprisingly well preserved, with a number of monuments to rival even Gettysburg.  The Western states that weren't very well represented at Gettysburg had their moments in the sun here, with places like Missouri and Illinois having massive monuments to their soldiers that threw moderation to the wind.

There was also a museum within the park dedicated to the USS Cairo (unfortunately named after the city in Illinois, and thus pronounced "Kay-row"), a Union ironclad sunk on the Mississippi during the siege.  The Cairo was essentially a traditional riverboat that they plated in iron and armed with cannon, and it was ships like her that helped Grant flank the Confederates and set up a position around the city that let him starve them out.

Anyway, in the 60s they found the remnants of the Cairo in the mud, and raised her.  They've rebuilt her rotted parts as well, which lets you walk around the deck and get a feel for the ship.  I also learned that after the ship was sunk, the crew of the Cairo was transferred to a gun battery on land, to help with the siege.  They became a bit of an entertaining oddity to the Army batteries, since the Navy boys were keen to keep some semblance of shipboard life intact, even after the Cairo sank.  They polished the gun platform as if it was a deck, and slept in hammocks they hung from trees.  I only wish someone had taken a picture.

It was also at Vicksburg specifically, and in Mississippi in general, that Amanda and I began to feel uncomfortable.  It wasn't that we felt harassed per se, but there were little things all day that felt off.  At every other Civil War site we've been too, I didn't feel like there were more eyes on me than there should be, given that I've been wearing a Union kepi and have mutton chops.  Here, though, I felt like people were staring at me, especially when I spoke and they knew where I was from, and apparently in the gift shop a Vicksburg I was a bit of a sight.  I didn't even have my kepi on, but it was noticeable in my hand, and a Mississippi mother put a grey rebel kepi on her kid, and kept loudly looking over at me while she told her daughter how good she looked in it and how it should be a new facebook profile picture.  When her daughter went for the blue Union kepis, she was not so subtly steered away and not even allowed to try one on, while her mother kept giving me the stink eye.  I hadn't even said anything obnoxious, which I'm wont to do ("I'm here to see what we won", or "Blue kepis are for winners", or somesuch), so I keep thinking that it had to do with the simple fact that I had a Union kepi.

Amanda also felt like eyes were on here at the hotel we're at, because she didn't have eight pounds of makeup on or a whole can of spray in her hair when we were walking around the grounds.  I don't mean to seem like a Damn Yankee here, but both of us independently felt weird, and only talked about it later.  All in all, as great as the Vicksburg Military Park was (and it was great), Mississippi hasn't done anything yet to dispel our pre-conceived notions about Mississippi.  We'll see about tomorrow.

-M

Day Six: Driving Through Georgia

We Left the Carolines this morning, turning from the sea.
Flying 'cross the Interstate to get where we need to be.
Another National Historic Site for us to see;
That's why we're Driving Through Georgia.


Hurrah!  Hurrah!  Just my girlfriend and me.
Hurrah!  Hurrah!  Her pass gets us in free.
With my dad's electric car to help with the gas fee.
That's why we're Driving Through Georgia,

Bit of a mixup this morning, as I'd set my phone on silent yesterday and forgot to take it off, so we didn't hear my alarm and our plans to have a nice leisurely breakfast down towards the Charleston Battery were thwarted.  No to worry, though, since we were able to grab a bite on the way and were none the worse for wear, at least as far as our timetable goes.  With a quick jump over the Savannah River, we were in Georgia.    My only previous experience with this state was in the areas basically just outside of Atlanta, and while my impressions of the state haven't exactly changed much, it's been interesting to see this part of it.  We headed towards Macon aways, and ended up outside of Andersonville, to see the site of the most notorious prisoner of war camp on American history.

I don't know how familiar you might be with the camp, since it doesn't get a lot of mention in the history books, apart from a paragraph or two about how awful it was.  Basically, the Confederates threw up a log stockade in the middle of East Nowhere, Georgia, and began to funnel Union POWs there in the spring of 1864.  Before that prisoners were actually usually exchanged based on an agreement between the two governments, but that changed after the tide began to turn against the Confederacy and the US realized that it was in its best longterm interests to imprison as many Southern POWs as possible, to break the Confederacy's back.  Unfortunately neither side was equipped to handle the influx of prisoners, and Andersonville and other camps like it were hastily thrown together.

The camp itself was an open field inside the log fence, with a smaller series of posts on the inside marking a "dead line", about 20 feet in from the wall.  If any prisoner approached the fence past the line he was shot.  Other than that the Confederates didn't really care what the prisoners did on the inside, and a shantytown of tents and lean-tos were built by the inmates around a small stream down the center of the camp that was their only water supply. Initially the camp was designed to handle 6,000 prisoners, and things were bad, but not horrific.

Things became horrific after the camp swelled in size, and guard facilities upstream from the camp contaminated the water supply before it even got to the prison.  At its highest count, the camp held 33,000 Union prisoners, which would qualify it as the fifth-largest CITY in the ENTIRE Confederate States.  So, yeah.

With so many men crammed into a lawless pit made for one fifth their numbers, Andersonville became a hell on earth, with military discipline forgotten and gangs armed with clubs roaming around stealing and murdering.  Disease due to the contaminated water supply, coupled with a chronic lack of food, led to the deaths of nearly 13,000 of the 33,000 prisoners there.  I didn't take any pictures of the photographs of prisoners once they were rescued from the camp at war's end, but you could put them side by side with pictures of prisoners at Concentration Camps in World War Two and not know the difference.  It was tragic, terrible stuff.

The National Prisoner of War Museum is also at Andersonville, with artifacts and exhibits about all American POWs, from the Revolution to the present.  It was also very good, if heavy, and while I can't say I enjoyed it, per se, it was still very engrossing.  A powerful reminder of those left behind after the fighting stops, and a look at a side of war that people don't always want to talk about.

After that we headed north to our campground in Columbus, GA, on the outskirts of Fort Benning.  After a minor disagreement with some fire ants on where we made our kitchen area, we regrouped with dinner of sausages and toast, before turning in.  We've been reading and writing for a good two hours now, as the sunlight fails and the cicadas come out.  After reading a few more chapters in James MacPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, I updated what I could and prepped for tomorrow.  I'm actually finishing this up by the light of the Coleman lantern we got at the MCX at Camp Lejeune (thanks Jacquie!), while Amanda's already asleep.  We were playing a game of "Thunder, or Artillery Practice at Fort Benning?" earlier (verdict: DEFINITELY Artillery), but they seemed to have stopped now that it's dark.

But I should wrap up; it's getting close to 11:00, and we have to be up at 6:00 tomorrow to hit the road.  From here, we head across Alabama (though Montgomery and Selma), into Mississippi through Jackson, and onto Vicksburg.  I think this is the furthest South we go (or, well, that Andersonville was the furthest South), and from here, we go west, north, and back east.  Let the next leg of the trip begin!

-M

Day Five: Drizzly Charleston and the Club Calhoun

Here I was thinking that getting to Charleston would feel easy, after all the driving we've done. Sadly, one of the things I didn't take into account was the sheer volume of people around Myrtle Beach, and the fact that US 17, our trusty route for most of our time in the Carolinas, is stop-and-go traffic lights all long the beach. This was in some ways a good thing, since it allowed us to marvel at the number of independent waffle houses and minigolf places along the road (the winner of best minigolf place goes to the one with the animatronic T-Rex and half-size Pirates ship dueling), but after being blessed with the ability to travel continuously between 45 and 80 miles an hour, we were stuck between 20 and 30 for long stretches once we entered South Carolina. But we made it, and have been quite enamored with Charleston so far. First things first, we made the 4:00 ferry to Fort Sumter, and although it POURED while we were out there, it did let up in spurts long enough for us to look around a bit. The rangers were very nice (and complimented my Union Kepi!), and they have both the Palmetto flag that the Confederates raised over the fort when they captured it, as well as the US flag that Major Robert Anderson lowered in surrender. In a wonderful historical reversal, Anderson hung onto the flag through the war, and was able to raise it in triumph over the fort when the Union recaptured it in 1865. Later when he died they draped the same flag over his coffin (which is weird because the damn thing is like 10 feet by 30 feet). Fort Sumter was kind of a big deal for Anderson.

From the fort we were also afforded a wonderful view of Charleston harbor, as you would expect, including the other fortifications that were used to attack Sumter itself. Among these is Fort Wagner on Morris Island, off to the left of Sumter, which achieved fame for the assault on it in July 1863 by the 54^th Massachusetts, the first organized African-American regiment of the war. The attack failed and most of the 54^th was killed, but they were celebrated through the North and are remembered for their bravery. You might have seen the movie “Glory”, starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman, about the 54^th. If you haven't I'd recommend it, it's quite good.

Anyway, from Fort Sumter we made our way our way to our hotel, right in the heart of the city. Once we dried off from the rain and settled our stuff, we walked around, taking in the sights of a city that, while quite charming, was much, much smaller than we thought it would be. Charleston is a city of 120,000 people, which, for reference, makes it smaller than Worcester, MA (175,000), Providence, RI (170,000), and about the same size as Hartford, CT (actually, Hartford has 125,000, says Wikipedia). There is no skyline to speak of visible from the Harbor, and while the downtown area is lovely, with all sorts of antebellum estates and gaslights everywhere, I didn't see any buildings taller than maybe 7-10 stories..

On the recommendation of my brother Scott, we ate at the East Bay Deli, where I got a turkey and pastrami club named for John C. Calhoun. There was a lot named for Calhoun around, though not as much as I was expecting, given how he was a secessionist hipster, wanting to leave the Union in 1832 before it was cool. Anyway, if you're ever in Charleston I'd recommend the East Bay Deli. Let's just say the Calhoun Club nullified my hunger.

From there we went to the South End Brewery for dessert and a sampler platter, though we had to brave a hoard of bats to get there. Amanda made the point that if they were out to eact cicadas we should be thankful, though I mean seriously there were like 10 of them, swooping and diving all over the place. Not cool. But the brewery was in a neat 3 story building with all the tanks right there, and they had a good selection of styles, from what I was able to gather from the sampler. After watching US women's beach volleyball advanced in the Olympics, we strolled around the gaslight back to our hotel, in time to watch some swimming events.

So all in all, a really neat city. Both of us would like to come back someday when we have more time to look around and get a better feel for the city as a whole, but a nice urban interlude. From here it's onto Andersonville POW camp tomorrow, and then across Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi te next day to get to Vicksburg. But should probably get to bed now, long day ahead.

Cheers!

-M

Day Four: Semper Fi

Our friend Rich has been in the Marines for four years now, and is winding down his time at Camp Lejeune after serving in Afghanistan. It's nice to have him back in the States and out of harm's way, and he's been doing office-type work in the Camp's Radio Battalion recently. E had to leave for work several hours before Amanda and I woke up, but we were able to head over to Lejeune with Jacquie to get a tour of the place and meet Rich for lunch at the officer's club, which was an experience all its own.

First, I have to remark on how huge the base was. Jacquie said she thought it was something like 60 square miles, and even if it wasn't that big, it was BIG. We arrived on the back end of the base near an artillery range, and got our first taste of what base life is like, as we were saluted by the solider on guard at the entrance, even though Rich was nowhere in sight. Apparently officers have a blue decal they put on their cars, and it's protocol to salute the officer's car, regardless of whether he's in it. It happened to us 3 or 4 times through the day, and Jacquie mentioed it's even happened to her in the parking lot of the Camp Commisary. It feels odd, but it's kind of neat nonetheless.

After we'd driven past several “Tank Crossing” signs to meet up with Rich at Radio Battallion, he gave us the dime tour around the Camp, showing us barracks, motor pools, armories, the NCIS branch, and the 2-star command post for Lejeune. After that we went to the officer's club for lunch, where I spent more time than I ever had before staring at people's collars. Given the Marines' summer uniforms it was sometimes difficult to make out insginia, but my final count was two Colonels, two Liuetenant Colonels, and more majors and captains than I could count. Amanda apparently saw a General by the salad bar, but I was too busy getting my Mr. Pibb to notice.

We dropped Rich back off at his office after lunch (he's in a series of temporary windowless trailers that he mentioned have become more or less permanent at this point. He really couldn't tell us anything more about what he does), and headed back to their house on Emerald Isle to relax and read a bit. Like I said, we had time to put our feet up and read for a couple of hours, which is something that's going to be hard to come by later on this vacation. We waited for Rich to get home and went to their community's private pool for a swim, where we were able to see a couple of Marine Ospreys in maneuvers above us before dinner. Part of their home search was having a favorite Mexican restaurant close by, and after a nice meal (just FYI, cowtongue burritos are actually quite tasty!) we came back to call it a night. After such a restful sty catching up with old friends, it's another day of heading south tomorrow, since we have to make it to Charleston in time for the last ferry to Fort Sumter at 4:00. But a nice little break from the road, more tomorrow!

-M

Day Three: Six Year-Old Matt Demands a Detour

I'm sure everyone had one or two things that they became obsessed with when they were children for no real good reason. I had a whole string of them, from sharks to dinosaurs to the space program, but when I was six, it was the Battle of Hampton Roads between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia, better known as the Merrimac. The battle was fought at the mouth of the James River on March 9, 1862, and it was the first battle between two ironclads in naval history. It was a draw, but whatever. I remember being six and watching a made-for-TV movie about the battle, that my parents had taped sometime in the late 80s or early 90s.

I LOVED this movie. I loved the battle scenes and the cannons and the burning of the USS Cumberland, which was the first victim of the Virginia when it arrived on the scene. I had to have my parents explain to me what the Civil War was to try and put the battle into context, and Andy tried to helpfully compare the Civil War to Star Wars, with rebels fighting against the established government. Of course, since I was six, I took this to mean that the Confederates were the good guys, since they were the Rebels like Luke and Han and Leia. Thus I rooted for the Virginia and her crew, and when my parents bought us models of the two ships, I was always the Virginia, and Andy or Scott was always the Monitor. I wasn't until sometime much later that I fully grasped the idea of slavery and that I was from the North.

Anyway, later on my interest in the battle was piqued again when I learned that the USS Monitor was designed by John Ericsson, a Swedish engineer who had tried to sell his idea of a ship with a rotating turret to Britain and France without success before coming to the United States. Being a proud Swedish-American myself, I became obsessed with the battle again, though from the Union point of view. I appreciated the Monitor for the engineering marvel it was, and tried in vain to dig up the old made-for-TV movie. Maybe I'll try again when I get back home.

Anyway, as we left Gettysburg this morning, all we had to do was make it to our friends' house outside of Jacksonville, North Carolina. We'd seen the major battlefields on this side of Virginia yesterday, and if we really wanted to, we could have powered through to NC. However, as we'd be passing through the Virginia Beach/Newport News area, I couldn't resist adding the Hampton Roads area to the list of battlefields I wanted to see. This was before I even found out about the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, which has A. a full-scale replica of the Monitor that you can walk around, and B. The Monitor itself, raised from off the coast of Cape Hatteras, NC, where is sank in a storm only a few months after the Battle of Hampton Roads.

The Mariner's museum itself was really well done, shiny and engaging but also informative. They had a lot of information on the history of naval warfare and the construction of the two ironclads, as well as replicas of the gun deck of the Virginia and the captain's quarters on the Monitor (surprisingly spacious and luxurious!). There was a theatre with a movie about the battle itself, and a while exhibit about the battle's place in popular culture. Unfortunately they didn't have a mention of the movie that had captivated me as a kid, but did have other movies and old-timey ads that used the Monitor to sell everything from whiskey to refrigerators.

But the crown jewel of the museum is the ship itself. Raised in the late 70s, it's still undergoing rigorous desalinization, with most of it submerged in special treatment tanks, with the circular turret being sprayed with solution. There was an observation deck from which you could see the whole process, and an updated whiteboard with what was on the docket for preservation on that given day. Pretty neat.

The replica of the ship was also really freaking cool, since you could actually walk around it and get a sense of how big the whole things was. Honestly it was a whole lot bigger than I thought it was going to be, given that it was a ship designed for river defense, and that it sunk right off the coast while being towed back to Washington. All in all we spent about an hour and a half there before getting back on the road, to head down to Jacksonville and our friends at Camp Lejeune.

Through Virginia and into North Carolina, Amanda and I formulated a new game as we began to really enter the South with a Capital S. It's called “Megachurch or Regional High School”, and it's a lot harder than you'd think. Sure, sometimes it's made a little easier with a steeple here or a baseball field there, but after the third Megachurch with a football field out front, the line begins to blur. It also took us until we were right outside of Jacksonville for us to see any Catholic Churches at all. Another thing you just assume will be everywhere when you're from Massachusetts, I guess.

So now we're snug at Rich and Jacquie's place, where we'll spend the next two nights. It's almost a vacation from our vacation, being able to stay in the same place for a couple days, and where we don't have anything specific on the agenda. Rich wants to show us around Camp Lejeune tomorrow, but other than that we'll play it by ear, and that sounds fantastic right about now. But anyway, it's getting a bit late (11:30!) so I should probably wrap up.

-M

Day Two: Let's All Go to Manassas, Let's All Go to Manassas. Let's All Go to Manassas, to See Ourselves Bull Run

Whew! Back at the Artillery Ridge Campground in Gettysburg, after a long day that spanned three sites, three states, and four battles. Waking up at the crack of dawn again, we made coffee and set off south across the Mason-Dixon line, feeling very authentic. On today's docket: Manassas, Virginia for the sites of First and Second Bull Run, then to Sharpsburg, Maryland for the Battle of Antietam, and then to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia to see the armory site that was raided by John Brown in 1859, setting of a chain of events that would lead the nation to war.

I was overly excited about all this, since the only Civil War Battlefield I'd been to was Gettysburg, and I was going to see some new sights today. We powered past Maryland and crossed the Potomac (for the first of FIVE TIMES today) to get to the Manassas, the site of the first real battle of the war.

A side note before I continue: I'll be using the Northern names for the battles through the blog. Most of the time it doesn't matter, since Gettysburg is Gettysburg and Fort Sumter is Fort Sumter, but there's a wrinkle in naming other battles, two of which we saw today. The North tends to name battles near strategic bodies of water after the water, hence the First and Second Battles of Bull Run, for, well, Bull Run, and the Battle of Antietam for Antietam Creek. The South tends to name battles after the closest major town, so they call First and Second Bull Run First and Second Manassas, and they call Antietam the Battle of Sharpsburg. I'll be using the Northern names for two reasons: first, I'm from the North and they're most familiar to me, and second, we won the freaking war and so we can call the battles whatever we damn well please. Winners write the history, so deal with it.

Anyway, First and Second Bull Run July 21, 1861. The First Battle is actually only on a small part of the overall field, which I suppose makes sense since it was only a few months after the last states seceded, and neither army had any idea what the hell they were doing. No one was battle-tested yet, and I've heard it described that the battle would be decided by which army panicked and broke and ran first. As it was, the Confederate Army was close to breaking when General Bee saw General Thomas Jackson recklessly forward on horseback, barely even flinching in the face of Union fire. Bee yelled to his troops “There stands Jackson, like a Stone Wall”, and an American military legend was born. The Federal troops broke first, and retreated to the safety of Washington.

In late August 1862, The Armies of the Potomac and Northern Virginia would find themselves facing off around the creek at Bull Run again, as Lee and Jackson tried to swing north to Maryland. Amanda's ancestor was actually at Second Bull Run, and we were able to trace his movements through what turned out to be a much larger battlefield. The armies were more seasoned, and the 12^th Pennsylvania ended up supporting New York regiments that were cut to pieces when James Longstreet turned out to be exactly where he shouldn't have been. All I could think about tracing the second battle was how pissed I'd be if I were a soldier having to fight over the same freaking ground we'd left just over ONE YEAR AGO, but I digress. Richard Gustin was actually just a captain at this point, but in one instance near a grove of trees, his Colonel got shot, the officer who replaced the Colonel got shot, and the command of the 12^th passed to Richard. He would have command off and on after the battle while his Colonel recovered from his wounds.

All in all the battlefields around Bull Run were done really well, though after getting used to Gettysburg, there seemed to me to be a dearth of monuments on the field. I mean, there were a couple, mostly put there by the Commonwealth of Virginia dealing with the whole “Stonewall Jackson gets his nickname and is badass” thing, but you can't go two feet without a monument at Gettysburg. It's actually a major reason they couldn't film the movie there, since it was shot before the days of ubiquitous CGI and it would have been prohibitively expensive to edit them out. But anyway, the Bull Runs, very well done, good maps and a nice auto tour.

But after the Second Battle of Bull Run, Lee turned north to Maryland, trying to lower Northern moral and convince Maryland to possibly secede. It took him the better part of a month to get to Sharpsburg, though it took us about an hour and half. Antietam was in many ways similar to Gettysburg, with a lot of monuments to various people and regiments, or to entire states honoring their soldiers. We actually got there just in time for a re-enactment artillery demonstration, which was by all accounts AWESOME. But though the battlefield has been very well preserved as well. With a lot of cornfields and split rail fences like Gettysburg, the thing that struck me about Antietam was how SMALL it was.

That's not to say that not a lot of the battlefield isn't preserved, it is. It's just that the whole battle took place over an area you can easily see from one elevated bluff, which in a stroke of good planning, is exactly where the Parks Service put the Visitors Center. They had an observation deck where a ranger could point out the whole thing blow by blow, which was great for a person like me who wasn't really all that familiar with Antietam, apart from the fact that it sucked.

And ooooh, did it suck. Gettysburg is the bloodiest battle of the war, with more than 5,000 men dying over the course of its three days. Antietam, on the other hand, had 2,300 men lose their lives, and the whole battle was over in an HOUR AND A HALF. Richard Gustin popped up again, having followed Lee with General McClellan from 2^nd Bull Run, and the 12^th Pennsylvania reserves fought over a cornfield at the northern end of the battlefield that changed hands like 6 times. He was lucky to be where he was, though, since down the slopes of the farm soldiers were fighting over what became known as “The Bloody Lane”, a sunken farm road that the Confederates used as cover to fire from. Union soldiers eventually flanked them, though, and were able to fire straight down the lane. One solider apparently said “It was like shearing sheep in a pen. I couldn't miss.” You've probably seen pictures of both the Bloody Lane and the Dunker Church, a small farmhouse used as a meetinghouse by German immigrants. People working for Matthew Brady came and photographed them after the battle, and they were the first pictures of dead soldiers on the field that most people saw.

Unfortunately by the time we'd gotten to see some of the battlefield, it was getting to be a little late in the afternoon. We've tried to space things out enough so that we're not going to be frantically rushing from place to place, but today we had a lot to see, so we did a highlights drive around Antietam and had to get going to Harper's Ferry. Which is a shame, really, since if the rest of the field was as interesting and well preserved as what we saw, we didn't really do it justice. Also we were able to find a monument to William McKinley, who was a sergeant at the battle, that was placed there after his assassination as president in 1901. It was careful to point out that McKinley was able to successfully serve hot coffee and food to his superiors whilst under enemy fire...important stuff to remember, I guess. Coffee is serious business.

Anyway, heading up to West Virginia, we came to the confluence on the Shenendoah and the Potomac (again!), and the village of Harper's Ferry. We found it right on the border of kitchy-tacky and quaint, kind of like Old Sturbridge Village meets Six Gun City, only if a crazy man had attacked it in search for weapons to start an armed slave revolt. The area around Harper's Ferry is actually really pretty, and the rivers below were littered with fishers and tubers. We were able to see a museum about the John Brown Raid in 1859, how the Marines who captured Brown were commanded by Robert E. Lee, and see the firehouse where they holed up after things went south. The actual armory isn't there anymore unfortunately; the Virginia state militia tried to seize it after Virginia seceded and the Federal troops stationed there burned it to the ground to spite the Confederates. All in all a good take, but not quite what we were expecting.

But anyway, the daylight is failing and we've got another big day ahead of us tomorrow; heading to Newport News, VA to see the USS Monitor, and then all the way down to Jacksonville, NC to stay with friends near Camp LeJeune. More later!

-M

Day One: Gettysburg, Left Flanks, Farbs, Haunted Cows

You missed a lovely sunrise today. Leaving my parents' home in Rutland under the care of my cat Buddy at 5:00, Amanda and I made our way south. Our first stop on the tour was Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and even though it's the northernmost battlefield of the war, it still took us upwards of 8 hours to get here. One of the resounding lessons I've learned already is that as a New Englander, my sense of how big states usually are is GROSSLY at odds with the truth.

Anyway, we're settled in now after a day of seeing the sights, and getting our tour off on the right foot. Gettysburg is a good one to start with not only because it's close, but because of the huge importance it has on the narrative of the war. In the parking lot of the new Visitors Center, we saw license plates from all over the country (though sadly no other New England states), and the accents of the people around the park were scattered and disparate. The Civil War is the most important event in our nation's history, and the Battle of Gettysburg is the hinge upon which the history of the nation turns. Every American should come to Gettysburg.

Of course, one of the reasons we're on this trip., apart from being huge history geeks, is to track the war experience of Amanda's Great Great Great Grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Gustin of the 12^th Pennsylvania Reserves. As luck would have it, the 12^th was stationed in support of the more famous 20^th Maine (of The Killer Angels fame) on Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, and then on Big Round Top on July 3. They don't have a monument on Little but do on Big, and were the extreme left flank of the Union Army during the last day of the battle.

Getting up there was a little difficult, though, as the regimental history that Amanda found has an account of them going up to Big Round Top at dusk on July 2 in pursuit of some Rebels that may or may not have actually existed, getting separated from each other and shouting around the summit until they gave up and went back to the line on Little Round Top. They were a little more successful in daylight the next day, and I can vouch that the hike up to the summit to Big is steeper than you're expecting it to be. I mean, I did it on a paved footpath in flipflops, but still.

Other than finding Richard Gustin's monument, the highlights of the day include a trek up the Eisenhower-era observation tower (my genetic Lindblad fear of heights continues to manifest itself late!) and a lengthy discussion about some cows we saw grazing on what appeared to be part of the battlefield behind the Confederate lines on Seminary Ridge. Amanda wondered why they would be allowed to graze there, and I figured they must be dining on grass that used to be the hallowed dead. So, haunted cows, I guess? Maybe the ghosts are transferred to haunted milk. There's a marketing opportunity in there somewhere for the National Parks.

After the battlefield tour we went into town and walked around a bit, passing my brother's old Frat House from when he was a student at Gettysburg College, and trying to find me a Union blue Kepi that would fit my gigantic head. It wasn't easy, and after hitting up Dirty Billy's Hats (where I got my fedora all those years ago) and a couple of other sutlers in town, we finally were able to find a middle of the road quality kepi that fit, and didn't look like crap. I dunno if I'd be able to wear it re-enacting without being called a Farb (the re-enactors term for a n00b) but it's good to have for the tour, and when I wear it makes my Ambrose Burnsides beard look less ridiculous.

But we're settling into the tent at our campsite now (right on the backside of Cemetery Ridge; you can spit into the battlefield from here), and we've go a long day ahead of us tomorrow, through Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and back again. More later, goodnight!

-M

What Have We Here?

So, it has come to this.

As you might know, it’s been the plan for a couple of years to
celebrate my girlfriend Amanda’s completion of a Masters in History by
taking a long vacation, and the time is almost upon us.  The thing is,
we’re both huge history geeks, and instead of doing something normal,
we’ve decided to go on a Civil War Battlefield Road Trip.

Having crossed the country on a roadtrip in 2007, I figured that I
would want to document everything as I went, and I’m a bit more
comfortable with the idea of blogging now than I was then.  I’ve kept
a seldom-updated blog for a couple of years now, and figured that
instead of trying to tack onto that, I’d strike out fresh.  So, it has
come to this.

I’ll be updating as regularly as I can along the route as time and
internet access allow, though I wanted to get the ball rolling early.
At present, the plan is to take two weeks to head from Massachusetts
down to Gettysburg, then across Maryland and Northern Virginia
(hitting up Antietam and 1st and 2nd Bull Run, Chancellorsville,
Fredericksburg, and the Wilderness), before heading south in earnest.

From the DC area, we’ll head to Virginia Beach to see Hampton Roads,
then head through North Carolina to see some friends at Camp LeJeune
in Jacksonville.  Not a lot happened in North Carolina during the war,
though so we’ll move on to South Carolina, Charleston, and Fort Sumter
before turning west through Atlanta, Andersonville, and the northern
nothingness of Alabama and Mississippi to get to Vicksburg.  From
there we head along the river to Memphis, then across Tennessee to
Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville before turning back north.
Incidentally, Appomattox Court House will be our last stop, which is a
nice touch.

So, yeah.  We’ll be taking a lot of pictures, and reading a lot of
books.  We already have James MacPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom lined
up, and are trying to procure Michael Sharraa’s The Killer Angels on
audiobook for the 8-hour trip to Gettysburg.  We’ll be doing a fair
amount of camping on or close to battlefields, and I plan on having a
blue Federal kepi to wear around the south as well ;)

I don’t know ho much updating I’ll do before the trip itself at the
end of July, but check back here once we get going for posts,
pictures, and commentary.  Should be a lot of fun!

-M